The need for an economically viable continuous harvesting process has become apparent since the late 1980's. It is desirable to quickly and efficiently harvest trees using the least amount of resources. Such efficiency is particularly desirable on tree farms, where trees are planted in rows and harvested relatively quickly after planting, thereby yielding a high tonnage of wood per acre per year, but lesser amounts of usable wood per tree.
Some inventors have attempted to improve the efficiency of harvesting and accumulating harvested trees. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,697,412 to Kurelek discloses a feller head for mounting to a boom of a boomed-vehicle. The head includes a cutter and a relatively small accumulation area adjacent to the cutter for accumulating a small amount of cut trees.
However, such feller heads are not particularly useful for harvesting large volumes of trees, such as found of a tree farm. In particular, these types of cutting/accumulation devices do not offer continuous cutting and accumulation. An operator must first position the head next to a tree to be cut, command the cutting assembly to cut the tree, then command the bunching assembly to move the tree to the head's small accumulation area before another tree may be cut. This process must be repeated for each tree to be cut. Moreover, because of weight limitations of such designs and the relatively small size of their accumulation areas, the collection of cut trees must be frequently removed from the accumulation area, further increasing the time required to harvest a group of trees.
Thus, despite the improvements of the known tree harvesting and collecting devices and methods, there remains a need for a continuous harvesting device and process that will simultaneously, quickly, and if desired, automatically, harvest and accumulate a very large amount of trees in a limited amount of time. Also, there remains a need for a tree harvesting device having an accumulation area that may be emptied without the need to stop the harvesting process. In addition, there remains a need for a tree harvesting device that will sever trees without generating a large amount of sawdust and without relying on complex machinery to spin saw blades or drive hydraulic shears.